Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Monday March 14, 2011 @09:32AM
from the i-see-what-you-did-there dept.

euphemistic writes "Reportedly the information Wikileaks was set to disclose about a particular bank back from December, 'a massive batch of internal Bank of America emails' has been leaked. While the site hosting it seems to currently be down due to the obviously gigantic amount of traffic interested in this leak, the leak is said to pertain to the Bank of America's improper foreclosure on homes. 'The report came from a former employee with Balboa Insurance — a risk management and insurance firm. The employee reportedly corresponded with Bank of America employees and was told to falsify loan numbers on documents to force Bank of America to foreclose on homeowners.'"

An especially wise decision, considering the third-person plural conjugation is actually more acceptable to most speakers of American English. Think about it: you wouldn't say "it sucks" when referring to the fraud committed by Bank of America—you'd say they suck, because they are humans and they suck.

I would agree if he were releasing info that endangered ongoing operations (troop movements, missile deployment sites, etc, in the midst of a battle and to the enemy), but when he's whistleblowing on the criminal actions of his superiors, he must be protected. Every agency at EVERY level must be routinely audited for corrupting, and with 54% of our taxpayer money going to feed this military machine in a time of nation crippling deficits, they deserve scrutiny most of all.

I would agree if he were releasing info that endangered ongoing operations (troop movements, missile deployment sites, etc, in the midst of a battle and to the enemy), but when he's whistleblowing on the criminal actions of his superiors, he must be protected. Every agency at EVERY level must be routinely audited for corrupting, and with 54% of our taxpayer money going to feed this military machine in a time of nation crippling deficits, they deserve scrutiny most of all.

First - Manning wasn't in a position to make judgment on the suitability of classification. At that level, classified is classified. It is handled the same way no matter what is between the cover sheets.

Secondly - what he uncovered was hardly "criminal actions of his superiors." He was a fool to believe that what he had was all that special and worth putting his own freedom at risk. But that's how being a whistleblower works. You don't get immunity just because you thought you were doing right. You put your self at risk to uncover something so heinous as to be worth that risk.

Finally - the point still stands. BoA is not the US Military. Manning and some corporate risk analyst are not in the same situation. But it isn't surprising that someone would believe otherwise (whether the OP is believer or a troll).

Provided that he indeed was the source of the leaked material, and it seems likely he was, this is NOT whistle blowing. That would be releasing a specific set of documents relevant to what you are blowing the whistle on. He released everything he got his hands on. Please note some of it is shit like what US diplomats think of foreign leaders. That is nothing that is of any public interest, nor in the slightest illegal/immoral/etc.

Now regardless, he broke the law. Please remember military law is a little different from civilian law. Regardless it is illegal to disseminate classified information you are given access to.

In a case of legit whistle blowing, then perhaps that is a mitigating circumstance (though the UCMJ doesn't really seem to provide an exception, perhaps it should but it doesn't) but in this case no. It was a leak of whatever he could get, without regard for value or harm. That really removes any moral high ground argument.

Hello! What is this?! I responded to "whistleblower defense isn't going to fly [in court]" with something OBAMA'S OWN ADMINISTRATION speaker had concerns with: Bradley Manning's treatment now would affect the court case later [if he's ever able to stand trial].

I called it torture, and I'm not alone. Even the UN is investigating [huffingtonpost.com] the government's treatment of Bradley Manning. Likewise, several journalists have taken Manning's treatment to task and called it 'torture' (Will Bunch [philly.com], Daniel Ellsberg [guardian.co.uk]... the n

Sadly, indeed : Whenever it is a large corporation doing something illegal they at most get a slap on the wrist and no one goes to jail, but whenever it is a single commoner you get thrown in so fast you'll leave skidmarks on the ground.

Money == More important than human rights, privacy or even laws themselves.

Although the money helps this isn't about money...
It's about the fact that these "people" are doing actions of an individual under the name of a corporation. The difference in your example between your corporation vs commoner is that one is an individual. The government can certainly throw the book at a corporation, but what happens? It either gets a bad reputation and loses the market for a while or they just dissolve it and start something new under a new name. There is no personal responsibility for any of the actions of a corporation and therefore there is absolutely no accountability for their actions.
As long as we continue to treat a corporation as the "person" responsible for its actions and not the actual people in charge will they be able to do whatever they want with little to no consequences. These people have just learn to shield their own malfeasance under the guise of a legal corporation.
I'm by no means saying that all corporations are like this, but at some point it seems they stop caring about the work they are doing and start caring about the state of the company.

There is no personal responsibility for any of the actions of a corporation and therefore there is absolutely no accountability for their actions.

Corporations may not be individuals, but they are run by a board of directors that is ultimately responsible for the actions of the company. If individual wrongdoers within the corporate 'body' are not handed over to the authorities, then the board would be held responsible. If this were the case, you'd see a lot less evil in the business world. If generals are held responsible for the actions of their troops during wartime, then surely we can hold the leadership of a corporation responsible for the actions of the corporation.
Maybe not, but it makes me feel better to think so.

But I guarantee you the people at the top who oversaw the lot won't be among those handed over. The people handed over will be the salesmen and their managers at the bottom end of the organisation. It's entirely possible that top executives communicated something along the lines of "We must do whatever is necessary to achieve our goals" but they won't have said "and if that means breaking the law, so be it". Or at least, not in writing.

Members of the Senate Finance Committee will hem and haw and grandstand.

BOA will make some lamo PR statements from the spawn of Satan that PR and Marketing people are.

BOA will then make some "campaign" contributions to the Senators and after a few weeks, the public will have forgotten it all because the powers that be will come up with some distraction issue. A distraction issue is something that really isn't important to this country's well being: going after Muslims (Sen.King), security, non-existent ter

Your comment about "this period of history" draws attention away from the fact that the U.S. government is EXTREMELY corrupt. Few in government are on the side of the people. Most of the really powerful in the U.S. government are helping the corrupters.

The US doesn't have a democracy. It has a plutocracy. These huge financial firms used captured regulators, insiders, and like-minded ideologues to create an environment in which, once again, the rich could further enrich themselves upon the backs of the middle and lower-class. While, as you say, this has always been the case, at least to some degree, the last three decades have seen a massive concentration of wealth and power in a select elite. The recent banking fiasco is simply the pinnacle of that trend, resulting in massive unemployment and loss of homes, pensions, and what little other wealth the non-rich have while the rich continue to get richer and richer, while absorbing none of the consequences of their actions.

But, I think to future historians, the most baffling thing of all will be how so many of the middle and lower class cheered on deregulation, defended the rich, decried attempts to correct this wealth and power imbalance as "class warfare", thus actively working against their own self-interests.

Perhaps you should learn how tax brackets work. Someone making $80,000 is not paying any more taxes.

A hypothetical person making $100,000 would be paying a slightly higher tax percent on $20,000 dollars.

I have no idea what state you're talking about, but let's assume that the top bracket pays 15%, instead of 10% lower brackets pay. That would mean, under the law you are speaking of, someone who made $100,000 would pay an extra 5% on the $20,000, which is $1000.

So those thinks support wealth creation, but they do not represent wealth creation. When the highway is complete, the money taken from citizens has not provided additional wealth, it has simply turned into a highway

What do you think wealth creation is, other than turning some amount of resources into goods worth more than that. Yes, the Internet and GPS increased the wealth of the world. So did building a highway, assuming it was worth more than what was paid for it.

I disagree.
While I agree with the general theme that the system is hopelessly corrupt, I disagree that this is what will mark this period in history. I largely believe that this level of corruption has existed for almost as long as humans have lived in "civilized" societies.
What will mark this period in history is that it is so well documented. Never before has every nuance of humanity been so well documented. In fact, there's so many documented about humanity right now I don't believe it will be pos

They are accountable in China, just not to western rules. Every businessman is committing a capital offense in China today. If they aren't, then they aren't a good businessman. So why are only a few executed, and only in high-profile cases (like lead in toys and such)? Because the actual enforcement of the rules is "don't cause loss of face to Chinese business as a whole." But if you are the head of a company that is caught doing something as bad as this (fraud to capitalize on a recession you actually helped cause), in China, even if the CEO had nothing to do with this actual fraud, he'd be executed.

Of course nothing will happen. These leaked Bank of America emails were released during the Japanese earthquake/tsunami/nuclear crisis. GREAT FUCKING JOB THERE, CHIEF!!! It shows they're a bunch of amateurs who know nothing about timing so this reaches the broadest audience. Slashdot, reddit, and the rest will get up in arms but the people who need to know, i.e. mom & pop and that mythical linux using grandma, won't have it show up as a blip on their radar because of their reliance upon mainstream media to feed them.

Or it shows that Bank of America PR staffers know exactly how to contain a potential disaster. By releasing their own information as Anonymous during a time where it is guaranteed to be buried under far more pressing news stories.

Feel better having called me an idiot? Good, glad to hear it. I know I always have better luck in getting my point across when I call people names.

Now that this is out of the way, let's review my post.

What I said was that if someone can validate that those emails are legitimate, then YES, investigate. But don't put someone (whether it's a billion dollar company or a single-owner corner store) to the expense of having to defend themselves without more evidence than a single chain of unauthenticated ema

yep have to admit when all the mortgage things happened, the credit unions remained unscathed. My wife and I asked our credit union about that and they said they don't report to a board but only report to their members so they are not under alot of pressure to make giant risky investments; they are only their for their members. And while other banks were being taken over left and right, you didn't see hardly any credit unions being taken over.

You basically nailed why so many corporations are suffering from corruption from within - they are beholden to board members more than their customers. They don't even care about the fundamentals of business anymore. They're too busy inventing new ways to fuck each other.

At business school I learned something within the first 20 minutes of finance 101. The most important lesson in the class which was repeated on the final was what is a company's goal?

If you said to make money you are wrong. The goal of a corporation is to raise its stock price, not make money. A third of the course dealt with how to trick investors by creating magical ratios of liquidity (assets that can turn to cash very fast) to make wall street happy and raise the share price. To top it off we studied how going into debt was a great thing as it gave you profit leverage. Holding off paying your suppliers was good too as you can invest the money while you drag your feet.

The rest of the course dealt with a privately held and small companies. Now their goals was to make money as well as have an excellent credit rating and low debt to make sure adequate lines of credit were available in case of an emergency and to plan ahead conservatively without going bankrupt. 2 different worlds.

Private companies are the way to go. They simply make rational decisions and play by the rules. The big boys don't and love risk. If the average CEO job is short you can guarantee yourself you wont be held accountable either for short term gains that cost the company later. WOW

Indeed, and the stockholders they do care about are in it for one thing: To watch their stock price rise, so they can dump it and make a profit.

So CEO, brought in by the board (who are large stockholders) do crazy manipulations, like laying off half the workforce, that bring the stock price up. So board members can sell. Then these idiot manipulations catch up as the company loses value, and the stock price drops, and they let the CEO out the door with a million dollar parachute for doing the job he was hi

I've always liked the idea of cooperatively owned businesses, I would like to see it applied to more types of businesses. In Sweden, one of the largest supermarket chains is a consumer coop, they have better quality overall than the privately owned chains in my experience, perhaps because of the lack of pressure to cut costs from investors who only care about the profits. Members pay a one-time member fee and then get refunds on what they buy, between 1 and 5%.

yep have to admit when all the mortgage things happened, the credit unions remained unscathed. My wife and I asked our credit union about that and they said they don't report to a board but only report to their members so they are not under alot of pressure to make giant risky investments; they are only their for their members.

If your local credit union is anything like mine - they were unscathed during the mortgage crisis because they didn't actually hold any mortgages in the first place. They'd either s

Also, if credit unions aren't an option for you (which depending on your laws they may not be), at least look for a locally owned bank. They have in general been behaving much better towards their customers and depositors than the big guys.

I still would laugh. Even through the economic disaster of the last few years no depositors lost money from FDIC backed banks. Perhaps the lesson here is it's better to keep your money in the bank rather than toss it at the open market.

Inflation is based on the price increase of a basket of goods and services used by typical families. Gold is not part of that basket. Gold's value was falling steadily for a long time. A fixed amount of gold could buy smaller and smaller part of the basket all through 1980 till 2007, despite the spikes at y2k, 9/11 etc. Finally a bar of gold buried in the backyard back in the 1980s has the same purchasing power, almost but not quite. It has not beaten bond returns nor stock returns over that long a period.

I suggest you look further out than one year and stop worrying about how much money you lost by not buying gold. You could just as easily have lost it buying gold (as many have done throughout history). Invest in stable, predictable products that provide a reasonable rate of return over a lifetime. One year is get-rich-quick talk.

I have actually looked into doing that, well I looked into setting up a Building Society here in the UK (Our equivalent of a Credit Union) but according to the Building Society Association, it needs a minimum of £1M backing with 10 members agreeing on a business plan which can take 2 years to get approval from the FSA. The last Building Society to be setup was in the 1980s.

In some ways I think it's good that it takes a lot of effort and regulation to setup a Building Society but in a post Bankers are scum world, it does kind of feel like it's just there to stop new players entering a market which competes against banks and their huge profit margins.

I wonder if there will be some new Building Societies started up in the future given the hatred of bankers or whether the market has now been so well sewed up and no small BS's could ever be started again.

Reportedly the information Wikileaks was set to disclose about a particular bank back from December, "a massive batch of internal Bank of America emails" has been leaked.

Is this saying that Wikileaks' information was leaked by a third party?

As for bank foreclosure fraud, we've known for a year or more that banks have been doing that. A common case is that all the shady asset-juggling left things in a state that no one knows who actually has the rights to it, so the evictions are rushed through without proper legal scrutiny, or even on the basis of forged documents.

We've seen too many times over in the last decade (or three) that these powerful interests are pretty darn immune. Now and then someone high up either pisses off the rest, or is thrown under the bus and the perception of justice is maintained, thus muting the pitchforks long enough to snub any momentum. Sadly these guys could be found shooting orphaned kids to clear out foreclosed houses and they'd still get away with blaming it on "paperwork" or some such BS.

Read the Market Ticker [market-ticker.org]. Seriously. It is probably the most insightful site I've seen on the scope of the fraud being waged against the American public. In particular, note the number of times Bank of America or "Bank of America employees" get referenced in behavior that sounds more like it should be happening in Zimbabwe than the US.

But I find him no more, and perhaps less, a credible source than the banks. That site is written by Karl Denninger, who is a Tea Partier and Glenn Beck fan. Ok fine, but that does not speak to someone who is very balanced on the issues. That is a hardcore "Gold standard is the ONLY standard," kind of individual and not someone who has a good understanding of the complexities of finance and a balanced view (the phrase "bleeding heart liberals" is a favourite).

I visited his site, and the first entry was on guns, comparing Obama to Hitler, while his site is titled, "Commentary on The Capital Markets". Very relevant and erudite, indeed. And of course, the content and quality of his site went downhill from there.

Here is the problem, and the irony, of such sites (as I see it).

Ever since the crash, you've all these "experts" who have a tenuous grasp at best of fundamental finance or economics, and yet who are perfectly comfortable spewing forth rubbish on the topic. It's no different from the dotcom boom -- everyone pretended to know a little something about technology, and was perfectly happy to spew forth rubbish, without really knowing anything substantial at all.

Just read his junk on the state of the debt [market-ticker.org], and you realize that the man only talks about the market at a broad, superficial level, peppered with hackneyed hockey-mom aphorisms, without ever touching any of the fundamental drivers. Furthermore, I really wish somebody would give this guy a crash course in fundamental statistics on cross-correlation and causation.

The problem is that armed with half-baked knowledge and strong opinions, these guys are perfectly happy telling the world what's wrong, but offering nothing more than platitudes in fixing the problems without collapsing the economic structure we've built thus far.

Heck, what are the guy's qualifications? He has a Wikipedia entry that states that he is a "stock trader" and a CEO, but how much capital did he trade in? Unless it's hundreds of millions or more, he knows nothing about "capital markets" -- he is just a small fish in the pond. And what was he the "CEO" of? What are his educational qualifications?

The irony of such guys pushing forth their opinions is pretty much the same as creationists pushing their "agenda" to stop teaching evolution.

If you must, read someone like Nassim Nicholas Taleb [wikipedia.org] -- his books The Black Swan [wikipedia.org] or Fooled by Randomness [wikipedia.org] offer a lot more on why we fucked up, than some crazy right wing rhetoric by a chipmunk with half-a-brain (no insults to any chipmunks, of course -- they are perfectly adorable creatures).

This guy knows more about the markets and the economy than you or the vast majority of respected "economists" ever will.

For one, I am not an economist, and I never claimed to be one. For another, if you are making sweeping statements like that, you'd better back them up. The man does not even have a single publication, peer reviewed or otherwise, on either RepEc [repec.org] or SSRN [ssrn.com].

I'm sorry, but it would be akin to a random blogger on physics claiming to know more about "physics" without having a single peer reviewed

I went and read his first semi-incoherent rant about gun control and Obama. That was enough for me.

Also anyone who thinks you can hold the currency perfectly level doesn't understand how it works, or know history. Currency has never been perfectly stable and never will be. You can have it somewhat stable over the long term, at the expense of a lot more short term swings (that was how it used to be), but you can't have it dead level all the time.

The governement administration was pretty quick to hand them money to keep going and the oversight seems to be uninterested in putting people in jail.If you pickpocket a $100 store item expect to go to jail. If you force thousands into bankruptcy and put several nations into financial stress you will have no problem collecting your yearly bonus pay.

It seems to me we need a crack down on white collar crime.

Stop jailing people for grams of pot and start jailing people for ((( some smart saying I can't think of that means investment people who steal money))).

Thousands of those people put themselves into bankruptcy by purchasing homes that they couldn't even make the payments on, let alone afford.

That happens every year. There wasn't anything caused by the foreclosure rate. In fact, when the shit hit the fan, the foreclosure rate was on the rise, but still below historic norms. Blaming it on expected and predicted foreclosures was a lie invented by the people that committed fraud to cause the crisis. When you blame black people in the US, the tag sticks, even though it's a lie. White people in the US love to blame the minorities for everything that happens, especially when the problems were act

The corruption in the "market" economy (which it isn't) is making me turn more and more to the grey market economy. Bartering and selling goods and services for other needed goods and services with out using conventional financial channels, e.g. bank accounts and credit cards. Cut out the middle man and get off of the grid.Kkeep your "seed money" under the mattress. The mattress is a much safer place than putting into the hands of those thieves.

I also have run into some small businesses which are refusing to accept credit cards now. The theives at the CC companies not only charge obscene amounts of interest but also charge obscene fees to the merchants for each sale. By cutting out the banks the small businesses actually gain an edge over larger businesses by keeping costs low.

As someone who has worked for a big bank, I can assure you that while there are pockets of AMAZINGLY retarded people that commit blatant fraud, it is mostly just a large group of MOSTLY retarded people committing fraud and not really recognizing that's what they're doing.

I worked hand in hand with the foreclosure group and I think I can summarize what's really been happening:

1) Overwhelming Workload + Incompetent Staff = Mistakesa) Leads to massive spike in hiring through temporary agencies and the introduction of a much larger group of incompetent people into the process.2) Convoluted, counterproductive processes + people who can't use excel spreadsheets = Mistakesa) See 1a3) Incentive Structure - This one's a bit harder but most banks use production based incentive structures to pay employees beyond their base pay. The more work you do, the more money you make. If it's easier to get rid of a "file" (troubled loan) by tossing it to the foreclosure group and having it roll through that process than it is to help someone save their house, guess what happens. If it takes you an hour to successfully help someone (which it doesn't, it takes days or weeks) or 10 minutes to move their file to foreclosure and therefore out of your stack, and you get paid based on how many files you move out of your stack, guess where all your files go.4) Banks DONT LIKE TO RESCIND SALES. It costs them money.

To me, this is all SUPER old news. I watched this happen in real time for years and the news was always WAY behind on what was happening and WHY. It's not as simple as "banks are greedy and committing fraud/crime." That's certainly a part of it, but not nearly half of it. Realistically it's "There's too much work to do and the people doing it truly don't understand what they're doing"

It's way easier to recognize what's really happening when you look at how things are done at the bottom. Listening to CEOs and PR reps is a waste of time, they have no idea what's really going on underneath them.

The problems we have always faced are the result of incompetence, period. More to the point the problem is people.

I can't help but wonder who's really behind this leak. It smells a LOT like a false flag operation.

Bank of America has known for months that they're the next major Wikileaks target. Now all of a sudden the material pops up "from Anonymous", in the middle of the Japan earthquake, a HUGE news story - and over the weekend. I tried viewing the site all morning and have been getting 503 errors. If you wanted to bury an inevitable major embarrassment to your company, I think this is how you do it. Wikileaks, for all their faults, would never release this while there were so many other major developing stories.

Stop this protesting wherever you stand and start protesting in front of the houses of senators and CEO's. You want to put the fear of God into someone, protest right at there gate. Maybe even stir up a little violence.
Honestly, if you aren't willing to go to jail for your believes, your words will never go anywhere...

If you look at the USA, and ignore all the Walmart jerks, and software bubbles, a disproportionate amount got their money from "Hedge Funds". Now look around the world, how many others can you find? I think I found one.

These are the same Hedge Funds that bought up (and demanded, and got) all the US real estate debt, causing the whole economic problem. I wonder how many of those guys are hurting? Oh wait, none because they are all billionaires. Also if you look at the names... its the exact same people that came up with the bail out plan etc... talk about conflict of interest and self serving SOB's.

Bank of America...? Where have I heard that before...? Oh, yeah! They're the one that paid ZERO taxes last year!

I don't know what's in those leaked e-mails, but this item is just as big - and scandalous,

"GE isn't the only "Top 5" company on this year's Fortune 500 list that owed no income taxes. Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500), which suffered major losses in 2009, included a tax benefit of $1.9 billion in its annual profit."

BoA is down today, but not substantially more than the market as a whole.

If you have an account with a major broker, shorting is trivial: you just sell the stock. It doesn't matter that you don't own it; you just click the box labeled "short sale". You'll need some money in the account to start with, but you actually get to sell it today and enjoy the cash you get from it.

Note that if the price goes back up, though, your liability is unlimited. Today it's at $14. If it hits $20, your broker is going to

A) Borrow assets (stock in a company) at the current price.B) Wait a period of time.C) Return those assets to the original owner at the new current price.D) Keep the difference (or lose money).

Now, if you are shady, you can do what is called "Naked Short Selling", in which you perform this trick with assets that don't actually exist. This American Life [thisamericanlife.org] did a great episode called Enforcers [thisamericanlife.org] - the second half deals with Naked Short Selling and describes the process in detail. TAL has done several fantastic episodes on the financial crisis, well worth the time to give them a listen.

Hi Peggy,
I'm just a little concerned about the impact this has on the department and company. Why are we removing all record of this error? We have told Denise Cahen, and there is always going to be the paper trail when one of these sent documents come back, this to me, seems to be a huge red flag for the auditors: example: a scanned document that was mailed to us asking why the letter was received when the letter, albeit erroneous ( this being the letters that went out in error ) the auditor sees the erroneous letter but no SOR trail or scanned doc on the corrected letter is in the SOR and scanned in). What am I missing? This just doesn't seem right to me.

I don't understand the lingo so much of it is lost to me. However it does seem that at least one person was aware that illegal acts are being committed. Can someone who work in the industry explain some of the the terminology (DTN, Tracksource/Rembrandt,SOR)?

Basically "Tracksource/Rembrandt" is the system they use to record mortgage / loan info (i think)

There was an email before that one you posted saying something to the effect:We can't completely remove Mortgage/Load records from the database but we can remove the associated Loan Reference ID, That way any mortgages with no loan associated with it won't show up on an audit.